Good writing, missing plot.

[lovecraft68]

The market today is for big, ponderous trilogies with each book running to five hundred pages or more! Publishers call it "world-building" I call it tree desecration! The point is to "hook" readers with the first book and have a built-in audience for the sequels. To my mind, world-building can be accomplished with a minimum of words. "The clocks were striking thirteen" 1984. "The last man in the world sat alone in his room, there was a knock at the door" Frederic Brown's "Knock" and of course the entire story in six words by Hemingway, "For sale, baby shoes, never worn." I've been praised by lit readers and Amazon reviewers (for my non-literotica.com works) for my world-building. Why write five hundred words when fifty will suffice? My fiancee just landed a three-book deal. Her world-building is brief but wonderful.
It really seems to be a generational thing. Yes TLOR is huge and Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy rivals the Manhattan phone book in length, but those were exceptions. None of Lewis's Narnia books are over 250 pages or so, yet it is every bit as developed as Tolkein's. In one story, I crammed the entire history "House elves" (my invention) in less than five thousand words. I could probably spin an entire novel out of these creatures, but why bother? I said pretty much everything I wanted to say. Sometimes length really helps. "Moby Dick" was originally a MUCH shorter novel. Melville's Beta-reader, Samuel Hawthorn suggested the Herman "put some religion" into his novel. One really can't argue with the results.
Today's "hip" young authors all seem to go for words, words, and more words, with plots that are paper-thin at best. The Nineteenth Century was the era of the long novel, but aside from Hugo and Dickens how many of them are read today? I suspect that this will be very much the case with these twenty-first-century word smiths.

Its the same in mainstream as it is here in the sense the readers want more. Readers enjoy reading, they are not as picky and snarky about the same things authors who think they know how everything should be(in their opinion) are.

There are stories here with over 50-and some 100-chapters, and the readers keep wanting more. They fall in love with the characters, the settings etc...a new book becomes a new visit with an old friend.

Sci-fi fantasy readers will read anything their favorite authors keep piling on. Want to talk excessive and wordy? Look no further than Game of Thrones that takes hundreds of pages to describe a boat trip done in a few minutes in the show.

But the readers of that series-which will never finish so I don't know why they're that vested in that sense-can't get enough.

If it sells, people will keep doing it. Same as Hollywood, people complain everything is a remake, reboot, sequel....little is new....but as long as people keep going to the movies(when we could and when we can again) or watching on streaming services, they won't change.

The fan base drives the market, not the creator. Whether that's fair or not, that's the way it is.

 

[Wifetheif]

Its the same in mainstream as it is here in the sense the readers want more. Readers enjoy reading, they are not as picky and snarky about the same things authors who think they know how everything should be(in their opinion) are.

There are stories here with over 50-and some 100-chapters, and the readers keep wanting more. They fall in love with the characters, the settings etc...a new book becomes a new visit with an old friend.

Sci-fi fantasy readers will read anything their favorite authors keep piling on. Want to talk excessive and wordy? Look no further than Game of Thrones that takes hundreds of pages to describe a boat trip done in a few minutes in the show.

But the readers of that series-which will never finish so I don't know why they're that vested in that sense-can't get enough.

If it sells, people will keep doing it. Same as Hollywood, people complain everything is a remake, reboot, sequel....little is new....but as long as people keep going to the movies(when we could and when we can again) or watching on streaming services, they won't change.

The fan base drives the market, not the creator. Whether that's fair or not, that's the way it is.

The fan base SEEMS to drive the market because publishers and editors want people hooked on media and therefore will buy media that they can turn into a franchise. "Look at Ready Player Two" a horrible overblown sequel that NO ONE except Ernest Cline and his publisher's bank accounts wanted. The plan is to turn it into a franchise with movies and new books every few years. It doesn't matter that Cline writes on an eight grade level (he really does! His education must have been abominable!) what matters is that his first book sold so we publishers MUST drain this new resource until we have squeezed out every last drop.
Big books beget bigger books. Ready Player Two is longer than Ready Player One, but is inferior to the original in every way. The original had a tidy but trite ending -- BUT that was not enough! The publishers asked for a sequel with more drama, more risks, and a bigger canvas, (oh can you be more inclusive this time?). Cline, with dollar signs in his eyes, obliged. The result is a mess of a novel that was promptly mocked on the internet for its sheer awkward horribleness. But hey it SOLD! It might be utter crap BUT it keeps our franchise going. Who cares about critics? Readers will buy ANYTHING you publish, chum, so long as you listen to US!
The Game of Thrones books are progressively longer. People forget that LOTR was conceived as a single volume but was split into a trilogy by the publisher because a one-volume LOTR was both unwieldy and not inexpensive to produce in its day. Writers see dollar signs, of course, they do. Publishers see them however not as entities or unique voices but as an oil well to exploit. New upcoming authors are pressured to make their books longer and their world-building more complex, even if the author doesn't want to. The audience is given no other option. Publishers follow trends, even if they are artificially generated. That's why we get five movies with the same basic scenario released in the same summer.
Publishers don't believe an author when he types "The End" So query sheets sent to potential authors hint VERY strongly that they expect sequels as part of the contract. Not every writer is capable of writing a series of sequels. They may want to move onto something else, but if they try, they will probably lose their contracts. Demand is created and supplied -- That is how it works today for the most part.

 

[lovecraft68]

The fan base SEEMS to drive the market because publishers and editors want people hooked on media and therefore will buy media that they can turn into a franchise. "Look at Ready Player Two" a horrible overblown sequel that NO ONE except Ernest Cline and his publisher's bank accounts wanted. The plan is to turn it into a franchise with movies and new books every few years. It doesn't matter that Cline writes on an eight grade level (he really does! His education must have been abominable!) what matters is that his first book sold so we publishers MUST drain this new resource until we have squeezed out every last drop.
Big books beget bigger books. Ready Player Two is longer than Ready Player One, but is inferior to the original in every way. The original had a tidy but trite ending -- BUT that was not enough! The publishers asked for a sequel with more drama, more risks, and a bigger canvas, (oh can you be more inclusive this time?). Cline, with dollar signs in his eyes, obliged. The result is a mess of a novel that was promptly mocked on the internet for its sheer awkward horribleness. But hey it SOLD! It might be utter crap BUT it keeps our franchise going. Who cares about critics? Readers will buy ANYTHING you publish, chum, so long as you listen to US!
The Game of Thrones books are progressively longer. People forget that LOTR was conceived as a single volume but was split into a trilogy by the publisher because a one-volume LOTR was both unwieldy and not inexpensive to produce in its day. Writers see dollar signs, of course, they do. Publishers see them however not as entities or unique voices but as an oil well to exploit. New upcoming authors are pressured to make their books longer and their world-building more complex, even if the author doesn't want to. The audience is given no other option. Publishers follow trends, even if they are artificially generated. That's why we get five movies with the same basic scenario released in the same summer.
Publishers don't believe an author when he types "The End" So query sheets sent to potential authors hint VERY strongly that they expect sequels as part of the contract. Not every writer is capable of writing a series of sequels. They may want to move onto something else, but if they try, they will probably lose their contracts. Demand is created and supplied -- That is how it works today for the most part.

Yup, and they're also tossing in what I call the nostalgia sequels....another Bill and Ted movie this many years later? (I assume the guy not named reeves had time for this) Coming to America two...30+ years later?

The franchise-movie wise-that's the best example is Halloween....the original is 43 years old and they are still beating on it. They have reached a point they are remaking the remakes.....they brought Jamie Lee back in the 90's in the 7th installment to kill Michael once and for all....then last year brought her back again acting like they hadn't already done it.

For me, I don't care how much I may like something there is a saturation point, but I think the younger generation doesn't get that because recycled Pablum is all they've known.

 

[Jada59]

Yup, and they're also tossing in what I call the nostalgia sequels....another Bill and Ted movie this many years later? (I assume the guy not named reeves had time for this) Coming to America two...30+ years later?

The franchise-movie wise-that's the best example is Halloween....the original is 43 years old and they are still beating on it. They have reached a point they are remaking the remakes.....they brought Jamie Lee back in the 90's in the 7th installment to kill Michael once and for all....then last year brought her back again acting like they hadn't already done it.

For me, I don't care how much I may like something there is a saturation point, but I think the younger generation doesn't get that because recycled Pablum is all they've known.

Yep. It's sad.

 

[Payne_Hall]

I wish I could speak on this with any kind of integrity, but I’m going to be honest. Sanderson could write an entire book about Dalinar Kholin or Taln and I’d read it about nine times. The same would definitely apply if Sanderson wrote more in Jordan’s world. And if Erikson throws out anything to do with Malazan, I’d read it too, even after the over 3 million word count main series.

Like... Don’t get me wrong, I get that it’s a little excessive when the word counts are in the millions, but... I just don’t want to leave those worlds when they’re just so bloody cool, you know?

And the Saga of Recluce is definitely just the same story retold for those first couple of books and it’s the same formula, but my God, Doran was just as cute as Lerris.